Page:Roman Manchester (1900) by Charles Roeder.djvu/174

 the matter for establishing my position. To understand the physiognomy of the town we have to transport ourselves back a few centuries, say, to manorial times. It has been pourtrayed to us, then, by various distinguished visitors. It was soon perambulated at that period and gravitated towards Hunt's Bank, situated between the extended angles of the Irk and the Irwell, and reaching on the south a little to St. Mary's Gate and on the northeast to Scotland Bridge. It picturesquely rose on a red, rocky promontory, which struck all alike as one of its main features. Hear

Leland (1538): The town of Manchester stands on a hard rock of stone.

Camden (1582): Where the Irk runs into the Irwell, rising in a kind of reddish stone, flourishes that ancient town being now called Manchester.

Cecilia Fiennes (1697): There is a very large church, all stone, and standeth high, so that walking round the churchyard you see the whole town.

William Stukeley (1725): Manchester, placed between two rivers, having rocky and precipitous banks, with a good prospect.

Daniel Defoe (1753): The town standeth chiefly on a rock, &c.

And, I think, we have an early indication of this characteristic point retained in one of the Brythonic names given to the locality.

The itinerary of Antoninus, which gives us the chief military roads, was to the Romans what Ogilby and Morgan (1685), John Owen (1764), and the more recent Paterson and Carey have been to modern England. There is some considerable divergence of opinion as to the exact period the itinerary has to be referred to, which differs as wide as from Antoninus Pius (138–161) to Caracalla